Lessons
by EmmaMary
Summary: Hyde has learned many lessons throughout his life, and has always intended to follow them. But what happens when a certain someone comes into the picture. JackieHyde


**Disclaimer- I dont own anything.**

**Set after Sam leaves. It is of course, Jackie/Hyde**

Jackie always wanted him to tell her how he _felt_, about school, his job, their friends, and about _her_. He couldn't think of a good reason why he should tell her all these things, but he could think of many why he shouldn't. She was a blabber mouth, sure to go tell Donna everything he said to her, Donna would of course tell Eric and before he knew it, Kitty would be pestering him about his feelings, and he would be burnt more often than toast. Even if he could tell Jackie his feeling about everyday life and events, there was no way he could tell her how he felt about her; he knew it exactly what would happen. She would squeal loudly, jump into his arms and they would be the happiest couple in the world. But soon enough she would want him to tell her those special words more and more often. Of course he wouldn't, that just wasn't who Steven Hyde was, After all he couldn't be expected to tell her all the time when he didn't hear those words once in the first sixteen years of his life. Then, just like everything else, their relationship would go to hell, and he would be left to pick up the pieces of his shattered soul.

Steven had learned never to let his feelings show, because when you did, it was so much easier to be hurt. 

A long time ago, probably before he was even born, Hyde learned that trust wasn't something that was key in life, or his life anyway. His parents didn't trust each other, or him, and he sure as hell didn't trust them. Good thing he didn't trust them, that way it wasn't as much of a tragedy when both of them left him to fend for himself. But he turned out fine. Fine as an abandoned orphan burnout who spent his days pissed off in someone else's basement could be. He knew that down here in the basement, he still couldn't trust anyone. They were a gossiping circle, and no one knew something someone else didn't. They all had other people to lean on and he was no ones first choice. He would looked around the room at the faces, yep, no one to trust when it came down to it. Forman and Donna would stab him in the back to save their safe little lives, their families, or each other, which Hyde told himself he didn't find engaging, but way, _way,_ down deep inside he did. Fez and Kelso would both kill their trust for sex, and he had seen Kelso do it more times that he could count, to Jackie. Jackie, Hyde couldn't think of anyone she would ruin her trust for, but he still wouldn't let himself think it was for him, no matter how true it really was, he wouldn't let himself trust her either.

Steven had learned never to trust anyone; they always let you down anyway. 

After Steven's father left he spent an entire year waiting for him to come back. After that he spent an extra year hoping one day he would. And he never did, not for him anyway. Before, when he was younger, he always hoped his parents would shape up, would be able to go out without causing a scene, but it never happened. And when his parents left him at the mall he had stood in a toy store by the heroic action figures that lined the isle hoping that his parents just went off to buy him an ice cream. He hoped they would be back soon. But he stood in that store for hours when they never came. He saw a lot of people go in and out of that store that day, but he didn't remember most of them. He did, however, remember a little brunette girl with mismatched eyes that caught his attention even before her loud voice filled the store. She begged her father for a perfect baby doll with blond curls, and when he said no, she brought up that she would need someone to keep her company while he was away, and he gave in. Steven hoped that that little girl was really happy with the doll as a companion instead of her father, but he knew she wasn't. After she left he watched a mother and father with their two kids, a blonde girl, and a scrawny boy. The mother laughed a real laugh, and the father stole small secret smiles as his son looked at toy guns, it was then he hoped that his whole life had been a dream and this was really his family.

Steven had learned hope was something only morons had. 

Paranoid, it was word often used to describe Steven Hyde. He always felt he had a right to be. He wanted his dad to stick around forever, but in his heart he knew he would be gone within the month. He prayed his mom would stay, but never really prayed hard enough because he didn't think it would help. He knew Kelso still loved Jackie, and he thought she still loved him, and when he saw them together that day on the couch, he had known he was right; after all, he had never really been wrong about these things in the past.

Steven had learned to always expect the worst, so that when it occurred, which was inevitable, it wouldn't hurt quite so much. 

He had told his dad he would get good grades on his report card if he would come back, that one time he called after he left, it was the first and only thing little Hyde could think to give his father. Of course, the report card came in with C's and D's because he got bored of school, and his father didn't return. He promised Red he would stop the pot, and he didn't. Nothing was ever important enough to him to actually put effort into. He had confessed he would always be there for her, and of course, he wasn't. And it almost killed him.

Steven had learned never to let anyone expect anything form him, because he would never be able to give it to them. 

She wanted promises. Promises of a future together, promise that he would be around and choose her above all other things. But Steven Hyde didn't have the best experiences with promises.

"_We promise to stop fighting sweetie."_

"_I promise mommy will stop drinking Steven."_

"_I promise I'll be back son."_

"_I promise to take care of you Steven."_

Promises, promises, promise! They were all empty, all fake. He couldn't even remember if anyone had ever kept a promise they had made to him. Even after he thought about it long and hard late at night when dreams of everyone leaving him kept him awake, he couldn't think of a single time, so he finally stopped thinking about all together. He had made one single promise to himself a long time ago. He would never break a promise he had made to anyone, no matter the circumstance. It had always hurt him too much when people did it to him. Whenever he saw that look in Jackie's eyes that told him someone, once again, had broken the sacred promises they made her, it filled him with anger, and loathing towards those who made her feel so horrible.He knew he himself would never make her eyes glisten with the knowledge of a shattered promise. That's why he couldn't promise her commitment even after he knew he wanted it, because what was going to happen if he couldn't live up to it, if he broke the promise. He wasn't a coward at all, no; he was just kind, really.

Steven had had learned a long time ago that the best way to keep a promise was not to make one in the first place. 

Hyde had loved his father, and his mother, no matter how many times they disappointed him, he still loved him. And no matter how many times he told them as a young boy, after watching Eric be told a thousand times a day, he was never told it back. Eventually he knew Jackie had the same problem with her mother, when she told her she loved her Pam would smile down at the young girl and walk away. But there was a difference between Steven and Jackie, he gave up, and she never stopped trying. So she got him to love, inspired him, but he learned that final lesson when she turned her back on him, obviously stopped loving him when she slept with Michael, so he went off and married a stripper, because he sure as hell didn't love Samantha.

Steven had learned never to let himself love, it always led to disappointment.

His dad, his mom, Donna, Eric, Kelso, Jackie, Samantha, they had all left him, for different reasons of course, but what mattered was that they were all gone. He was simple an easy person to forget, he accepted that. The list would keep growing; seven wasn't a big number at all. Yet he only cried over one.

Steven had learned that everyone was going to leave him eventually.

He was supposed to marry her, eventually, or at least that's what he tricked his heart into believing, into hoping. He thought he had learned enough to handle her, he thought he had been through enough to save him from being hurt.

He had learned many things throughout his troubled youth. Yet he had yet to have a circumstance where he could use the hardest of his many lessons.

Until Jackie of course.

_Jackie _

She always wanted things from him, things he couldn't give her, things he had learned _not_ to give her.

Lessons were a thing you stuck too, that's what he had been told. And that's what he was going to do. Even if they were lies, even if opening up and trusting people meant not being lonely, he didn't care. It didn't matter to him that maybe if he hoped for something he would be able to go out and get it, or that if he simply made a promise he could keep it, if he tried hard enough. He refused to see that there were so many people that hadn't left him, that were still standing all around him, or still cared deeply about him, even if they weren't in the basement anymore. He wouldn't let him self believe he still loved her, or that she still loved him.

He wouldn't, couldn't. No matter that he knew it was true, that the only thing he really wanted in this world, the only thing he ever really hoped for, or wanted to fight for was a 95 pound brunette with eyes that made his knees turn to jelly.

These lessons had got him through life, had helped him become who he was.

But was that who he really wanted to be?

_No_

Had they really helped him all that much?

_No_

He cried for her, cried, and Steven Hyde does _not_ cry. Not for anything but her. He lost her because of the "lessons" he had accumulated through his depressing life, with this realization, he knew that maybe, he needed a new set of rules, and new set of knowledge.

Steven had learned that a life without pain, a life without disappointment, was a life without joy and a life without love, and that one came with the other.

So he set out, to get love back, and not just any love, but a love that had been brewing inside him long before he was willing to admit.

_He wanted to love Jackie again_, and he was going to.

And on that first day, the first day after all the turmoil that they were happy, the first good day after all the fighting, they kissed.

As she kissed him his world turned upside down.

For once in his life…

He forgot not to love.

**PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE review. It only takes a minute, and i can never get enough of them. **

**OH, are anyone elses lines not working?**


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